


Fever Dreams

by Books_Tea_Fandoms



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Fluff, Joanlock - Freeform, Joanlock Fluff, Sickfic, but i hope you like it, jeez I know this is hideously short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-11 20:32:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9017167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Books_Tea_Fandoms/pseuds/Books_Tea_Fandoms
Summary: Sherlock is has a fever. Joan knows Sherlock has a fever.Problem is, Sherlock is a tricky person to take care of...





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! This is just a very very short thing that I wrote in the time I didn't have to deal with my crazy family at Christmas... I haven't proof-read it or anything, so I don't know if it's any good, I just felt the urge to upload something, you know?  
> Hope you enjoy!

"Sherlock, come on! Marcus needs us at the precinct! They've found another body!" Joan called as she descended the stairs, going to get her coat. She paused. "Sherlock?!" Joan passed it off as Sherlock already being at the precinct, because chances are, he was the one that found it. But, even so, she went to his room to check. Surprisingly, he was there. More surprisingly, he was still asleep. Joan nudged his shoulder gently, and he stirred. Sherlock made a slight noise, and opened his eyes as Joan opened the curtains.  
"What is it?" He murmured.  
"Are you ok?"  
"What are you talking about? Of course I'm fine." He sat up, but very hastily collapsed back into bed.  
"Are you sick?"  
"I'm fine." He tried and failed to sit up again. Joan perched herself on the edge of the bed and held the back of her hand to Sherlock's forehead.  
"How are you feeling, temperature-wise?"  
"Cold, but this house is always cold."  
"Well, you're burning up." Sherlock was shivering.  
"I'm fine."  
"You've got a fever." Sherlock sighed, looking up at the ceiling.  
"How inconvenient."  
"You stay here and sleep. I'll go call Marcus and tell him we're not coming in today."  
"But there have been important developments. You need to, at least."  
"You know I can't."  
"But why not? I know perfectly well how to take care of myself, thank you."  
"True, but I know you won't, so I'm calling Marcus." Sherlock sighed resignedly, and lay back a little further, looking over at Joan. She dialled the detective. "Hey, Marcus, it's Joan...I'm alright, but we won't be coming in today...Sherlock's sick...yeah...I know he could, but you know him as well as I do, and he won't stay in bed...yeah, I know, I'm sorry...let me know if it's urgent...alright...bye." She hung up. Sherlock was staring at her through half-lidded eyes.  
"Even Marcus thinks you should be there."  
"Thought, not thinks. You need to sleep. I'm going to go out and buy you some Gatorade so you can get some energy into you with a low possibility of you throwing it all back up again." Sherlock mumbled something, and lay back down.

When Joan returned, it came as no surprise to her that Sherlock had not done as she had requested. In fact, he had done quite the opposite. He was sitting at the kitchen table, with a file spread open in front of him. He was looking even worse now that she could see him in proper light, and he didn't even notice her enter. He was sweating heavily, accompanied by the occasional shiver, and mumbling to himself as he pushed pieces of paper around.  
"Sherlock." She could tell he was startled, but the physical capacity to convey that was somewhat inhibited by his condition.  
"Watson, I- found- no- that's not it- I-" He went back to his work. Normally, Joan was used to these fragments of sentence, of Sherlock not completely explaining himself and leaving her to guess what he wanted to tell her. This, however, was not the same. He wasn't just struggling to string together a sentence to convey his clear thoughts, he was having actual trouble stringing together the thoughts in the first place. She practically dropped the bag on the table, and he looked up at her. He was a sickly white colour, and Joan's stern front flickered for just a moment, but she regained her composure almost instantly.  
"Sherlock. Bed. Now."  
"No."  
"Sherlock." She warned.  
"I'm not that sick."  
"You're running a fever."  
"But- case- cold-"  
"It's not going to go cold in two days. And besides, I'm still perfectly capable of working. Don't you trust me to get it right?"  
"Yes, but-"  
"But nothing. Go back to bed." With a huff, Sherlock obeyed. Joan followed with the bottle of Gatorade. As Sherlock climbed reluctantly into bed, Joan placed some more pillows behind him so as to support him. She opened the bottle for him, and handed it to him. He drank a bit, but then handed it back.  
"Joan, I don't want you to baby me like this. I'm fine." She was surprised that he managed to string out a sentence, and slightly annoyed that the content of his only successful sentence so far was what it was.  
"Sherlock, you can't just get up and work. You'll make yourself even more sick."  
"Fine." He gritted his teeth weakly.  
"I'm going to let you sleep, but if you need me, I'll be in the kitchen, working on the case." She let him be, and went over to the kitchen table, looking at the way Sherlock had organised the paper. To Sherlock's knowledge, it would have made logical sense to conclude the criminal to be the person he'd picked, but unfortunately, that person had washed up on the shore of the Hudson just this morning. Joan was fairly impressed that Sherlock's fever-riddled brain was function to the degree that it was; she put this thought to one side, however, and concentrated as much as she could on the case, constantly assuring herself that her partner was sleeping, and that disturbing him in any way would be detrimental to his health.

•~•~•~•

Joan ended up checking on him every three hours or so, and he was soundly sleeping whenever she poked her head in to the darkened room. This gave her hope that he would speedily recover.  
Unfortunately, this was not to be the case.  
The next day, Sherlock was even worse off than he was the first day of his fever. Joan, after sleeping fitfully on the sofa in the library, found Sherlock hardly sensible of the world around him, sweating buckets and shivering almost constantly. His breathing was shallow, and his temperature was soaring. Joan carefully gave him Gatorade, and subsequently water, to drink, helping him so that he didn't spill it, and then let him sleep as she called Marcus and tried to make further developments in the case.  
Sherlock in his state, kept hallucinating, and feeling dizzy whenever he shut his eyes. He ended up staring at a point where the wall met the floor, watching it occasionally distort, and wishing unbelievably hard for the whole fever state to stop. He also wished rather a lot for some physical sensation that would ground him to the real, as his state was keeping him untethered, letting him drift around in the semi-real, not really knowing reality from delusion, and, for the logical mind that he was, this was torturous.  
Even then, his sense of touch was out of kilter. His longing for physical contact had caused him to imagine that someone was holding his upward-facing hand, their hand under his, their thumb delicately stroking his palm. All of a sudden, that stopped, and he felt another touch sensation, this time on his cheek. He felt the backs of fingers, the index stroking his cheekbone up and down lightly.  
And then, he realised: this _was_ real, and it was Joan, and he was grounded to reality simply with the thought that his partner was particularly concerned with his getting better, and she had completely sacrificed the past two days for his sake. At this, he even managed the weakest of smiles.


End file.
